


In Which Kiel and Charm Cause A Large Amount of Chaos

by Blue_Rive



Series: Baby Story Thieves [1]
Category: Story Thieves Series - James Riley
Genre: (those tags are both charm's family), Canonical Character Death, Children With Knives, Fluff, Gen, Hijinks, Kidfic, Light Angst, Minor Character Death, Pre-Canon, a couple oc names are dropped bc like. kiel has friends, and that's WITH some of the outlined scenes being skipped, god i love kiel and charm's friendship so much, idk if there's a specific tag for that, not as in they're aged down or adopt a kid but as in it's precanon and they're both kids?, this got really long sajflksdafl;as;
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:14:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24778972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Rive/pseuds/Blue_Rive
Summary: A character study of Kiel and Charm, and their first meeting. (They're both incredibly weird eight year olds.)
Relationships: Kiel Gnomenfoot & Charm Mentum
Series: Baby Story Thieves [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1792159
Comments: 3
Kudos: 3





	In Which Kiel and Charm Cause A Large Amount of Chaos

**Author's Note:**

> this is part of a group project me and some other people have been working on since last year dealing with all the story thieves characters as kids!  
> the other works are in the series this is a part of- everyone is vv talented and i would highly recommend them!!
> 
> suggested listening: [ alchemist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcIke-sS2uM) by good kid

Charm didn’t like metaphors. People should just say what they meant. They didn’t have to be all stupid and confusing. Emotions were kind of like that, but  _ worse,  _ because they kept happening to her, too, and that was unfair. Why couldn’t they just keep to themselves? And then lies were worst of all. Charm was  _ sick  _ of them. People kept on lying to her about stuff ever since the crash and being all stuck-up and stuff. Just because she was eight didn’t mean she was dumb. Grownups thought that she didn’t know  _ anything.  _

Emotions were terrible and kept trying to make Charm sad, so instead she tried to focus on facts. Facts were nicer. They made  _ sense.  _ Charm could look them up and see if they were right. If she tried to find out if her emotions were wrong people just told her a bunch of stupid stuff like ‘All feelings are valid!’ Feelings  _ weren’t  _ valid, whatever that meant. They were  _ annoying.  _

Facts Charm knew:

  1. Her parents and sisters had died in an accident when their ship had crashed.
  2. Their ship had crashed a couple miles away from Charm’s house- well, not Charm’s house anymore. The government or the law or whatever said it wasn’t. She’d get it when she was of age, but that wasn’t for a really long time. 



If she wanted to know more, she had to go and check out the ship. There was lots of police tape and stuff around it, but Charm was little. She could fit through. There were Science Police and stuff guarding it, but they were always nice to her, or at least not mean. She’d looked up how they were programmed one time, and they had a clause in their code that said if the person they saw was Quanterian and not a criminal or anything, they wouldn’t attack. So that was okay. Charm’d be fine.

She flagged down a self-driving car to get there. It was the kind where you had to pay to ride. Charm had six dollars and seventy-one cents in the box where she kept her money. (She used to have a piggy bank, but it had a stupid design, so she dropped it out her window.) She was gonna buy a video game when she saved up enough, but she had to spend it all on the car ride. She should have just ridden her bike. (Did she even have a bike anymore? Or was that taken because of legal stuff, too?)

She got out of the car and stood in front of the ship, feeling dizzy. The ship was so much bigger from this perspective. The roof had crumpled, and panels on the front were collapsed in, charred and smoking and twisted in ways Charm didn’t know they could be. 

She used to draw little pictures on the frost on the front panels. Her sister Truth was older than her, and could reach higher, so she’d always helped Charm finish the top part of her drawings. 

They’d- Charm had been trapped under one of those panels, the right side of her face feeling weirdly distant and cold. Her leg was stuck, and it  _ hurt,  _ like everything was on fire and she was dying. People had come and tried to get her out, but they didn’t have either of her sisters. They must’ve been dumb and forgot. Charm tried to get free and she hit her arm on something and it  _ hurt  _ and then she’d blacked out. When she woke up she was in a hospital and people- people were telling her both her sisters were dead, but that wasn’t right. Dawn had been really young and little, sure, but her sister Truth was twelve and that made her practically a grownup. She should’ve been able to survive anything, being that old and cool and awesome. 

Charm dragged herself out of the past.  _ Focus, Charm. Stop thinking about dumb stuff and having feelings. You’re here to do detective stuff.  _

The first thing Charm noticed was that there were some marks on the side that looked weird. They were wide, kinda scorched-black spots, with holes in the middle of them that looked like they went through the whole ship. Logically, Charm knew they were laser marks, except that didn’t make sense. Why would anyone be shooting at them with lasers? Grownups  _ were  _ weird and stupid, but she didn’t think that even  _ adults  _ would mess up like that and accidentally shoot them.

She didn’t want to go in the ship. It kind of scared her, now that all that bad stuff had happened. But scientists didn’t get scared. Especially not of places that couldn’t hurt them. It wasn’t like the ship was gonna crash  _ again.  _ Plus, the Science Police had cleared out all the stuff in it that would’ve fallen on her. 

Charm pushed through a crack in between the two front panels. Fear rose in her throat at the sight of the ceiling of the ship collapsed in on itself, but she pushed it back. Fear counted as an emotion, and she was done with those, thank you very much. 

Looking at the brakes and engine and stuff, she realized that there wasn’t anything wrong with them. The people at the hospital had told her that the brakes had been working wrong. But Charm had the facts now, which was way better than people just telling her stuff, and what she knew was that the brakes were totally fine. 

The battery that powered- that  _ had  _ powered- the ship caught her eye, and she yanked it out, breaking the wires as she did so. 

Going straight through it was another laser hole.

The first thing Charm thought was  _ Great, I’m going to have to redo all my notes.  _

Things she knew:

  1. Her parents and sisters had died.
  2. It wasn’t an accident. 
  3. Someone had sabotaged them.
  4. That someone had a ray gun, or something else like it that shot lasers.
  5. That meant they were probably Quanterian, not Magisterian or anything.
  6. Charm had been lied to.
  7. Charm hated lies.



Charm went back home and tore through the house. Her parents had known something she didn’t, and she had to figure out what it was. 

It was nice that she’d found an actual mystery to solve. This way, she didn’t have time to think about other stuff. She could spend all her time finding out  _ facts,  _ instead of her stupid feelings getting in her way all the time. 

In her dad’s office, she finally found something. A stack of notes and papers, written in one of the more common Magisterian languages, Imayaki. She skimmed the papers- she wasn’t  _ that  _ great at reading it, she’d learned it in school but she’d always cared more about math and science- but a couple phrases jumped out at her.

From what it looked like, her dad- and her mom- had both been Magisterian spies. She knew they weren’t Magisterian, though. They must’ve decided to be traitors, somehow. She didn’t know you could do that.

Set apart from the others, sitting on the desk, was a letter. Charm leaned over and picked it up so she could read it.  _ Flee Quanteria,  _ it said.  _ You’ve been found out by Dr. Verity. Bring your kids- Truth, Charm, and Dawn. It’s not safe to leave them.  _

Charm… didn’t know what to do. The smart thing would be to leave Quanteria, like the letter said to do. But when they were doing that before, they got shot down. She was scared, which was stupid. And she was mad, she realized. Someone had killed her parents. She had someone she could blame for all of this. She’d always accepted that Quanteria was on the right side of things. That Magisteria was stupid and backward and needed them to take over. Now, she didn’t know if that was true. 

She needed to get to Magisteria and find out more. That was the best way to learn stuff. Go and look at it. 

\---

Kiel’d been living with the Magister for four weeks when he heard a knock on the tower door. He scrambled up from what he was doing, which was supposed to be learning Suindrala, the language most magical spells were written in, but instead he’d been playing with Alphonse. Alphonse was his kitten, and he was black with a white spot on his chin and he had really big cute purple eyes that kinda matched Kiel’s and he had really neat wings that were super soft and  _ actually worked,  _ (but Alphonse wasn’t that good at flying yet, so Kiel had to help him), and his ears were really soft and he liked getting scratched below his chin and he was Kiel’s favorite person  _ ever.  _

On the other side of the door was a girl, about Kiel’s age. She had curly red hair in a lot of little braids and lots of bandages on her arm. On one side of her face she had  _ robot parts,  _ and on her arm and leg and stuff too. They were really neat, but also made Kiel kind of nervous. She was probably Quanterian, ‘cause Quanterians were all sciencey and roboty and stuff, and nothing good ever happened to him when Quanterians were involved. 

The first thing the girl said was “What’s wrong with your hair?” 

Kiel touched it self-consciously. He’d been trying to dye it pink, but it’d turned out a weird shade of green instead. But he wasn’t gonna tell this girl that he’d screwed up. “It’s… fashion! Yeah! Are you part Science Soldier?”

She made a face. “Ew, no. How would that even work?”

“Dunno. Science.” 

“They’re  _ prosthetics,”  _ she told him, with the air of someone who knew big words and tried to use them to impress people. Kiel used to make up words to sound smart. He guessed that she was doing that too. It definitely didn’t sound like a real word. He didn’t want her to feel sad that she didn’t actually know what they were called, though, so he nodded along like it made sense.

“What’s your name? I’m Charm.” the girl asked.

“I’m Kiel! And you’re very charming.”

“What did you just say,” Charm said, her voice suddenly sounding way more intense. 

“It was a pun?”

“Do you want to die right now?”

Kiel attempted to distract her. “D’you wanna come in? It’s raining out.” 

“Sure,” Charm said, (hopefully) forgetting about her murder plans. She entered the room, looking around in wonder. When Kiel grinned at her, she glared at him. “Your house isn’t  _ that  _ cool. We have way better stuff on Quanteria.”

“You’re really Quanterian? Like, from there? For real? How come you’re here, then?” Charm could be here to arrest him or something. But she was eight, same age as Kiel. He didn’t think Quanterian kids got sent to do that kinda stuff.

“I stowed away on a Science Soldiers transport,” Charm told him proudly.

Woah. Kiel hadn’t known that Charm was  _ awesome.  _ “That makes you the second coolest person I know,” he told her.

“After who?” 

Kiel had been thinking about Alphonse when he said that, but he was pretty sure Charm would think that was stupid. “Me, obviously.”

“That’s wrong,” Charm told him. “Maybe if you only knew two people.”

Kiel frowned. How many people  _ did  _ he know? He started counting off names on his fingers.  _ The Magister, himself, Charm, Alphonse, those kids on his street he hung out with sometimes- Ella, Matthias, Sam, Anastasia, Raj-... Maria the potion seller…  _

“You don’t need to fact-check yourself, dummy.” Charm told him. “I didn’t  _ actually  _ think that you only knew two people.” She poked her head into the next room over. “Isn’t this where the Magister lives?” 

“Yeah! I’m his apprentice! He’s teaching me magic!”

“Ooooh,” Charm realized. “That’s what happened to your hair. A spell went wrong or something.”

“No,” Kiel lied. “I did it on purpose. It’s the new thing. How come you want to meet the Magister?”

“I need- I don’t need  _ help,  _ that’d be stupid, but I had to leave Quanteria and I don’t know what to do next, and I found a note that said the Magister knew a lot of stuff. Do you know where he is?” 

Kiel thought about what to say. He knew where the Magister was- in his study, just a couple of floors up- but… The Magister hated Quanterians. Kiel’d only started living with him like a month ago, and he was pretty sure he could get kicked out whenever if he screwed up. This was the nicest place he’d lived in years. He didn’t wanna mess anything up. But he couldn’t admit that he was scared, and he couldn’t leave Charm out in the cold. 

“Okay,” Kiel said, “the Magister is in his study. I can take you to him.” He managed a smile, trying to not look nervous. “I’m sure he’ll help you!”

He led Charm up the spiral staircase in the center of the tower, and knocked on the study door.

The Magister opened it, beaming at Kiel. “What is it, son?” 

“Well-” Kiel started. He was sounding too nervous. He tried to look straight on at the Magister- he’d said that Kiel shouldn’t be worried about talking to him. “I met this girl, Charm, and she’s really cool, and-” 

The Magister’s gaze flicked to Charm, who was standing behind Kiel with her arms crossed. “ _ Kiel.  _ Is that what I think it is?” 

“You mean, am I Quanterian?” Charm asked. “Course I am. You got a problem with that?” 

“ _ Yes. Leave,”  _ the Magister told her.

Charm glared at him. “Nuh-uh. You aren’t getting out of this that easily. I came all the way across space to see you. You gotta at least talk to me.”

Kiel flinched. “Charm, can you… let me? Talk to him? Instead?” 

Charm harrumphed and left the room.

“ _ Kiel,”  _ the Magister said to him. “What do you mean by bringing this… this  _ Quanterian  _ into my tower?” He said Quanterian like it was the worst insult he could think of.

“She showed up at the door,” Kiel explained. “And before, you  _ said  _ there was plenty of room in the tower, and later you said I could bring in whatever I liked-”

“That conversation was about your stray kitten, Kiel, this situation is a bit different.”

“How come? You let me live here. Why not her?” 

“Because she’s Quanterian. They are a vile people, devoid of emotion and imagination- you know this as well as I do.”

“She’s my age, though! She’s kinda mean, but like, so’s my friend Sam, and you said I wasn’t allowed to turn  _ them  _ into a frog.” 

“You keep comparing this to situations it’s nothing like. Think of it like having a Science Soldier living in the tower.” 

Kiel tried to imagine what that’d be like. It’d be… really scary, sure, but Charm wasn’t like that. ‘Sides, she’d said that she wasn’t actually part Science Soldier, even if she looked like it. “Those aren’t the same either!” 

The Magister sighed. “I’m not having this conversation right now. You’re  _ eight-  _ can’t you just take ‘because I said so’ as an answer?”

“What about Charm, though? She doesn’t have anywhere to go, now, she ran away from home, and she’s all-” Kiel flapped his hands vaguely. “Y’know, all fancy and stuff. She might get hurt or something.” He paused. “She is kinda awesome, though. She could pro’lly fight a Science Soldier. Maybe she has. But that’s not the point! We can’t just-” 

“ _ I  _ can, and I will,” the Magister said firmly. “Quanterians are all bad, every last one of them. This conversation is  _ over.”  _ He closed the door in Kiel’s face. 

Kiel sighed, sliding down the wall and sitting on the floor. “Sorry, Charm.” 

Charm came back into the hall. “The Magister is a jerk.” 

“He’s not!” Kiel protested. “He let me stay in his tower. I have my own room and I’m allowed to have as much food as I want and he’s even teaching me magic and how to read and stuff!”

“He isn’t letting  _ me  _ stay in his tower,” Charm pointed out. 

“Well…” He needed to change the topic somehow. Make Charm happier and act like the argument with the Magister hadn’t shaken him up. “I got an idea, hang on.” 

\---

Kiel was really dumb, Charm decided. His hair looked terrible and his cloak was weird and old fashioned and he was stupid. “You’re really dumb,” she told him.

Kiel looked wounded. “Am not.”

“Are too.” 

“Am not.”

“Yeah you are. Your plan,” Charm repeated, for not the first time, “is to have me live in your bedroom.”

Kiel nodded emphatically. “Like a secret. I got a lock on my door and everything. It’ll work super good, trust me.”

“And how long will I have to  _ live,”  _ Charm said, “In your  _ bedroom.”  _

Kiel fidgeted uncomfortably. “Dunno.” He grinned at her. Charm’d noticed that was kinda his default, especially if he’d looked nervous before. It was annoying. “It’ll be fun, though!”

Charm eventually conceded, and Kiel grabbed her hand and dragged her up to his room. It looked different than Charm expected- odd-shaped, with a sloped roof that went all the way down to the ground. In Quanterium, all the buildings and rooms were neat and square. 

Charm eyed it critically. “It’s kinda small. You sure this’ll work?” 

“It’s a nice room!” Kiel protested. 

“I didn’t say it wasn’t.” Charm sat down on Kiel’s bed. A quilt was draped over it, looking all magical and dumb and sparkly. “Ok, I got an idea. You tell the Magister you kicked me out, but then, um…” Charm didn’t actually know what she’d been planning to say next. She just didn’t want  _ Kiel  _ to have the only ideas. “Like, influence him subtly to let me stay. And then I’ll come back and he’ll help me and think it’s his idea.” 

Kiel flopped down on the bed too, putting his head in Charm’s lap. Charm tried to push him off, but he stayed stubbornly in place. “You mean like some kinda mind charm? I’m no good at those yet, and anyway it’d be un- unethi- not nice.”

“Unethical,” Charm said, “and not like that, I don’t think.” She tried to think of what she’d meant. “Just like… talk to him.”

Kiel made a face. “I don’t want to get in trouble.” 

“You could just get better at mind charms,” Charm suggested. “They’re not bad if the person you’re charming is mean.”

“They are too,” Kiel said. “I’ll do your first way, but I’m gonna wait a little. He’s pro’lly still mad.”

“‘Kay.” Charm said. “What’re we supposed to do while we’re waiting? I left most of my stuff at home.” 

“I’ll play you at cards.” Kiel pulled a beat-up deck from his pocket and waved it at her. “I gotta warn you, though. I’m real good. No one my age’s ever beaten me.” 

Charm knew a challenge when she heard one. 

Half an hour later, Kiel was sorting through his overflowing hand, looking like a puppy who’s owner had left without him. “You’re so mean, Charm.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Charm said, and played another two.

Kiel made a face and drew two more cards. Charm was all out of twos now- she only had three cards left in her hand- so she had to do a normal turn and let Kiel have one. 

Kiel took an entire stack of his cards and threw them down on the discard. 

“You can’t do that,” Charm complained.

Kiel froze. “Yeah. Yeah I am. It’s a rule. If you have them all in the same suit you can stack them.” 

Charm poked through the stack. “That’s not a rule. And these aren’t even in the same suit. Like half of them are hearts and half of them are diamonds.”

“Oh,” Kiel said, “nevermind. It’s same color then.” 

“That,” Charm said, “is  _ definitely  _ not how this game works.”  __

“It can be.” Kiel grinned. “Like, who made up how to play this anyway? Maybe I can be the next…” He rustled through the deck for the jokers, scattering the cards everywhere. 

“I took them out.” 

Kiel grabbed them from the pile Charm had pushed at him and read off, “Saikil Card Company.” 

“What about them?” 

“They can’t tell me what to do.”

Charm wasn’t sure if Kiel was actually as dumb as he seemed, or if he was faking it or something for attention, like her teacher always told them kids did. Unfortunately, she was pretty sure he wasn’t. “They aren’t the people who made up the game rules, dummy.” 

“Oh.” Kiel looked disappointed for a second, then recovered. “That’s cause  _ I _ do.” 

There were so many problems with that logic. It didn’t make any sense. Charm decided not to try and deal with Kiel anymore. “No. You’re obviously losing. I win.” 

“Wha- you’re not even gonna finish the game?” 

“There’s no  _ point  _ to that,” Charm explained. “I’m going to win anyway. Why bother?”

“But-” 

Charm pushed him towards the door. “It’s been long enough. Go talk to the Magister.” 

“You’re mean,” Kiel complained, standing up. “Fine.” He left the room, tugging his cloak after him in an overdramatic gesture of annoyance, and closed the door behind him. 

Charm started picking up the cards. None of them were written in Quanterian like normal. They were all written in Zauberi, one of the more common languages around here. Now that she thought about it, that had been all Kiel had been speaking, with a couple of borrowed words from languages Charm didn’t know. She didn’t really like learning languages and writing and stuff, but she’d learned a couple because she was super smart and her dad said she had to work on stuff she wasn’t as good at. It’d been easy, anyway. Charm wasn’t stupid like some other kids she could name.

Kiel had been gone for a long time. She was  _ bored.  _

In his closet, there were a couple boring black shirts and stuff and a whole lot of junk. None of it really looked like Kiel’s, though. A bunch of stuff that could have maybe been spell parts crowded the top shelf, threatening to fall on her if she moved anything. Some weird stuff was either shaking or glowing or humming. None of it looked like normal tools or robot parts. 

In the top desk drawer looked a whole lot more like stuff that Kiel would actually have. A couple of coins, some weird metal pieces, and some toys like tops and stuff- the cards had been his, too- and some random sticks and lint. It looked like he’d just dumped his pockets into that one drawer and called it a day. 

She hadn’t really been thinking about Kiel’s deal, but it didn’t… make sense. He kept saying stuff about the Magister letting him stay in the tower. Couldn’t he just stay in his own house, and not put up with that jerk? A lot of grownups sucked, and the Magister was probably the worst one. 

Kiel came back through the door, holding something. “Charm!”

“What’d he say?” Charm asked. 

“He fixed my hair,” Kiel started. Charm looked him over critically. His hair was black now, instead of that weird green it had been before. He looked a lot better this way. “Oh! And he said the earring that I had now sucked, and that he’d let me pierce my ears properly, and! He gave me a knife! Well, no, two knives, which is even cooler! And they’re magic! I don’t know how to do spells with them yet, but he said he’d teach me! Hey, check this out.” He unsheathed the knife he had in his hand and threw it at the wall. It embedded in a poster with a solid  _ thunk.  _

“Neat,” Charm said. “My dad never let me use the ray gun without him. I really wanted to shoot this annoying kid in my class and he wouldn’t let me. Can I have one of your knives?” 

“Nope. They’re mine. And you were mean to me when we were playing cards.”

“You have two, though. It’s not fair. You should let me have one,” Charm complained. 

“I have two so I can pick locks with them,” Kiel said.  _ Oh! Maybe if he picked a lock, it’d impress Charm.  _ “Wanna see? I can’t do it with the knives yet, but I  _ can  _ do it.” He dug through his desk drawer, stopping to shove some other stuff he might need into the pockets of the nice cloak the Magister had got him. Finally, he found his lockpicks, under some scraps of paper he’d haphazardly thrown in there. 

“Is that what those are for?” Charm asked, leaning over his shoulder. 

“Yeah!” Kiel grinned. “Hey, this is something I know more about than you do. That means I win.” 

Charm made a face. “Win at what?”

“Um,” Kiel said, trying to think. “Like, you can’t call me dumb anymore.” 

“But you  _ are, _ ” Charm said, sounding confused. “I’m not gonna  _ lie.”  _

“You can lie if it means you’re nicer,” Kiel told her. 

Charm shook her head. “I wouldn’t like if people lied to me just to be nice.” Her metal arm brushed against Kiel- it was kinda cold to the touch, and made little creaking sounds as she leaned forward. 

“Okay,” Kiel conceded, then realized something. “I’m not dumb!” 

“Yeah you are. Did’ya talk to the Magister about me?” 

_ Oh.  _ Kiel fidgeted nervously. He hadn’t said anything. The Magister had been so mad last time he tried and he didn’t want to get on his bad side. But he couldn’t tell Charm that he had and that it’d gone great, like he wanted to, ‘cause she’d just said she didn’t like being lied to. 

“Check this out!” he said instead, changing the subject. He ran over to his bedroom door and waved for Charm to follow him. When they were outside, he slammed the door with the lock turned so that it’d lock itself and sat down next to it. Charm sat next to him, looking on with curiosity. 

Kiel was still kind of nervous that she’d ask him about the Magister. He tried to pick the lock, but his hands were all shaky. This was the worst thing that could’ve happened. He’d wanted to show Charm how cool he was, too, and since he was taking so long she didn’t seem impressed.

He pulled the wrench hard to one side, but the lock didn’t click open. There was a silence as Kiel rattled the knob, wondering why it hadn’t worked. He took the pick and the wrench out of the lock and winced when he realized the front piece of the wrench had broken off. 

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!!” Kiel said. “Everything is a hundred percent good and fine. Don’t worry about it!” He grinned at Charm. “Also I broke the lock! But it’s okay! We can get in through the window!”

“You did what.” Charm said flatly. 

“It’ll be fi-” They both fell silent at the sound of someone coming up the stairs. 

“Kiel? You do know I didn’t mean for you to  _ play with _ the knives, right?” 

Kiel panicked, looking for some kind of place to hide Charm. There- there was a window! “Charm, go and hide out there!” He shoved her towards it. 

“The window’s locked,” Charm said. She stepped back, eyeing it, and then picked up a fancy-looking vase from a table in the hall and chucked it at the window. It broke through in a shower of glass. 

“That was awesome!” Kiel said. “Now hurry up and go!” 

Charm ran at the window and jumped out. Kiel heard a yelp as she started to slide down the side of the building, then a banging sound and the sound of something else breaking, and then she flashed him a thumbs-up and ducked out of view. 

The Magister stepped out into the hall. “What just happened here?” 

Kiel edged in front of the broken window. “Nothing!” 

“...Kiel.” 

“Really!” Kiel tried wildly to think of a lie. “Everything’s okay. I just tripped.”

“You trippe-” The Magister sighed. 

Kiel nodded earnestly. “I tripped and fell out of the window. ‘S why it’s broken.” 

“The window’s broken?” 

“No,” Kiel said. For some reason the Magister didn’t seem to believe him. 

It’d been cool when Charm broke the window, but he was kinda starting to regret it now. What if this was what got him kicked out? That’d be bad. He didn’t want Charm to have to leave either though. She couldn’t go back to Quanterium- she’d done crimes! Like, proper ones! (Kiel kinda felt like he had to start doing better ones, to one-up Charm. Stealing stuff wasn’t nearly as cool as stowing away on a Science Soldiers transport.) 

The Magister waved his hand and said something and the window sealed up.  _ Woah. That’s cool. I wanna be able to do that. Wait- how’s Charm gonna get back in? I can’t even open it ‘cause I broke my lockpick.  _ “Can you fix the door lock too?”

“...what did you do to it?” 

When he’d been at a foster home for awhile last year, they hadn’t wanted him to pick locks and do crimes and stuff, but the Magister was cool so he was pro’lly fine with it. “I tried to pick it to practice and I screwed up and broke off part of the wrench and it got caught in the barrel-mechanism-pin thing.”

“Oh.” 

“Usually this doesn’t happen! I’m super good at it.” Kiel gave the Magister two thumbs-up. “But if you could fix it that’d be real nice.” 

The Magister said a few other things and the piece of the lockpick flew out. 

“You didn’t wave your hand that time,” Kiel commented. 

“You want to know a secret?” Kiel nodded earnestly and the Magister knelt down to whisper in his ear. “I don’t need to do anything extravagant. I just need to read the words. All of the sparkles are just for flair.” 

“For real?” 

“Yes. You’ve got to have good flair if you want to be a magician. People don’t take you seriously if you live in a house and read books.” He gestured at the tower around them. One of the paintings on the wall is moving and the baseboards are glittering with a strange light. “If you’ve got something like this, though, you’re basically in charge of a country. That’s why you make such a good wizard.” 

“Magister-” 

“Please, we’ve known each other a while now. You don’t have to stick to such formalities. Call me Magi.” 

“What’s your real name?” Kiel asked. “Magi isn’t a proper nickname.” 

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.” 

“Magi, I have to ask you something. Remember that Quanterian kid?” 

“...Where are you going with this, Kiel?” The Magister still looked cheerful, but his voice had dropped into something more serious.

“Look- she’s on the run from the Science Police, right? Just like I was when you met me. An’ when  _ that  _ happened, you let me sleep in your tower and gave me hot cocoa and said- you said that you’d teach me how to fight them, right? And so- my friends and stuff, that got in trouble, and I didn’t know if they’d be okay- and I could be all cool and magic and stuff? Charm wants to fight them too.” Kiel thought so, at least. She  _ was _ very fighty. “So just… let her stay?” 

“She must be miles away by now. Though I hate to think of her fraternizing with other Magisterian children…” 

“She’s not that bad, really! Her family’s fighting against them, too. They were like… spies.” 

“That doesn’t change that she’s not here anymore.” 

“Oh, she is! She’s right out the window.” Kiel points with his thumb in the vague direction of Charm and raises his voice. “Ey, Charm, you can come out now!” 

She clambered up from wherever she’d been and banged on the window a couple times. “I can’t get in, idiot.” 

Kiel unlocked the window and Charm came in, brushing roof dust off her shirt. (Why’d it unlock from inside? That was bad security. What if he wasn’t s’posed to get out? He could just jump out the window. Though then he’d fall onto the rocks at the bottom of the cliff…)

The Magister pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine. She can stay. For  _ now.”  _

“Hell- heck yeah!” Kiel grabbed Charm’s hand and dragged her off. “C’mon, I got so much to show you!” 

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment!


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